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Thursday, December 31, 2015

I’m
not much of a list maker. I have a tough time coming up with an
absolute ‟Favorite” anything. I get obsessive about certain
topics and delve into them deeply, but I’m a dabbler at heart.
There are too many things to learn about to stay the course with any
of them. Renaissance Man or Master of None... You decide.

So,
in that spirit, here’s a list of random things that I
enjoyed/experienced in 2015, in no particular order.

Comics:
Given my profession, I spend a lot of my time recommending comics to
my customers. There is an art to this that goes beyond just
suggesting my favorite books. The ideal is matching a book to a
specific person’s tastes, whether I am in agreement with those
tastes or not. But obviously, I have my favorites. Few things that
were completely new in 2015 really stand out to me. I’ve been
reading East of West on a monthly basis since it started, but
sitting down with all four TPs made me really appreciate it. The same
happened with Low, Manhattan Projects, Black
Science, and Manifest Destiny. There is some disagreement
on the topic, but I personally really liked The Sculptor by
Scott McCloud. Both Marvel and DC had big events this summer that
completely lost me (and a lot of other readers as well). We Can
Never Go Home from Black Mask was a surprise hit for me, as was
Giant Days.

Music:
Though I listen to a lot of music I feel more distanced from
genuinely new artists and albums than ever. I’ve been working my
way through a project where I’m listening to a lot of classic
albums from the last 60 years or so (more on that specifically in a
future blog), but I’m just not being exposed to a lot of new stuff.
The 2015 release I have probably listened to the most is Hollywood
Vampires, a project by Alice Cooper, Joe Perry, and Johnny Depp
(with a host of other guest stars). Alice covers classic rock songs
by people he was friends with, all of whom are now dead. It’s kind
of a no-brainer for me. Alice is probably the vocalist I am most
familiar with, heard here singing lots of classic songs I know well.
The mix works. Plus there is an added level of poignancy in knowing
these people died, mostly of drugs and alcohol, and Alice is very
aware that he could easily have been one of them. I like Dodge and
Burn, the new album by the Dead Weather, though I haven’t
listened to it enough for it to really sink in. I listened to some
great bluesy slide guitar by a new-to-me artist by the name of
Seasick Steve. Leonard Cohen put out a new album called Popular
Problems that I like a lot because... Leonard Cohen.

Concerts:
This was the year of cancelled concerts for me. I had tickets for The
Replacements, but they cancelled and announced their breakup two weeks
later (luckily I saw them twice back in the 80s). I had a ticket for
Paul Weller in June, but a conflict came up and I had to miss the
show. It was a good choice (more on that in a moment), but I had
never seen him before and his stops in Pittsburgh are few. I had
tickets for The Who with Joan Jett this fall, but they also
cancelled. At least that has a rescheduled date in March. I did see
Lloyd Cole at Club Cafe in June. Lloyd is one of my favorite
singer/songwriters and I have seen him many times. A lot of his songs
are part of a very personal soundtrack for me, and this year I saw
him while in the middle of some soul-searching, so the songs had even
more impact than usual. I saw both Richard Thompson and Neko Case put
on great shows at the 3 Rivers Arts Festival. I saw Stevie Wonder
this fall, performing the entirety of his Songs in the Key of Life
album. It was something of a transcendent experience.

The
highlight of my concert experiences this year was the reason I missed
Paul Weller. The band Blue Coupe played a show in the living room of
the famous Evaline House for a giant costume party there. Blue Coupe
features Dennis Dunaway, the bass player for the original Alice
Cooper Group, and Joe and Albert Bouchard, founders of Blue Oyster
Cult. Michael Bruce, guitarist for Alice Cooper, was also there. You
can read how this all came about in the article I wrote for the
Pittsburgh City Paper HERE. As a lifelong fan of Alice Cooper, this
was kind of a dream come true. I met the guys in the band, helped
carry in their equipment, watched them rehearse the set of Alice
songs (this was pretty much a private concert for myself and about
five other people), and briefly shared the stage with them. It was a
pretty magical night for this old rocker.

Dennis Dunaway and me. It was a costume party.The bass guitar I'm holding is the exact one he usedwhen recording School's Out and many other classicAlice Cooper hits. It's a Rock and Roll Holy Relic.

Me on stage with the band.

Books:
This one is proving tough for me this year. I read a lot. Not as much
as a few other friends of mine, but a lot. In looking over my
Goodreads list this year not a lot stands out as really spectacular.
I read a lot of stuff I really enjoyed and discovered a few new-to-me
authors. Most of these fell into the category of fun reads but
nothing very life-changing. I did really enjoy the aforementioned
Dennis Dunaway’s autobiography, Snakes, Guillotines, and
Electric Chairs. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes was a
good Thriller/Time-Travel/Horror novel. I like it better than Broken
Monsters, her latest one. I liked them both enough to check out
more. Wow... you would think I would have more here to be passionate
about. Maybe I should rethink my reading list for the coming year.

Movies:
I don’t get to the theater very much either. I saw most of the big
blockbusters: Avengers, Ant-Man, Mad Max, Star
Wars. Thanks to Rowhouse Cinema in my neighborhood I’ve seen
some great older films on the big screen. I appeared in AspieSeeks Love, a movie locally produced by Julie Sokolow about my
old friend David Matthews. I used to see a lot of smaller,
independent films, but I have gotten out of the habit. Two of my most
enjoyable movie-going experiences this year fall in this category.
Only Lovers Left Alive is a slow-paced vampire movie starring
Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, and John Hurt. I know some people who
found it boring but I was mesmerized. We Are the Best is a
coming of age movie set in Stockholm in the early 80s. It follows
three young girls who decide to form a punk band in spite of a
complete lack of musical ability. This was just fun and beautiful.

TV:
There’s a lot of really good TV right now, and I watch too much of
it. Fargo was a tremendous amount of fun, if you can get
through the pretty extreme violence it contains. I watched The
Affair on Showtime and really liked the conceit of the
storytelling. That faltered some in the second season. I continue to
enjoy Game of Thrones, though I’m bummed that it looks like
the TV series is going to go past where the books are. I would rather
read it first. Even though I don’t watch all of them, there’s an overwhelming number of comics-based
shows. Walking Dead is still a fave, and I'm a little in love with Carol. I didn’t like Constantine
at all, though I admit my vision of that character is complicated and
most renditions of him these days don’t work for me. I haven’t
seen enough of Supergirl yet to have a firm opinion, though I
like what I’ve seen. Agents of SHIELD is better this season
(it almost lost me last spring), but I want it to be better. Arrow
is fun but all too often jumps into really teen angsty places that I
find tedious. Flash makes me really happy. I’ve been onboard
as a Doctor Who fan since the reboot, but for some reason the
latest season really, really grabbed me. Some of that is the
performances by Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman (who I didn’t like
when she first appeared at all). Some of it is that I am painfully
aware of how much many of this season’s themes really hit home for
me right now.

Personal/Professional:
Other than a handful of workshops I didn’t get to teach this year,
which is a shame because I really love the experience of doing so. I
was asked to join the Board of Directors of the Pittsburgh ToonSeum
and currently serve on the executive committee. I finished the
scripts for the second issue of Chutz-POW!, and inked 6 pages
for it (coming in early 2016!). I had art exhibited at Most Wanted
Fine Art gallery. I have been somewhat at odds with my creative
endeavors, not writing as much as I would like with no real reason
other than laziness and lack of motivation. I didn’t take a trip of
any kind this year due to some work schedule changes and a lack of
planning on my part. I plan on rectifying that this year. I had a
very brief relationship that while it didn’t work out forced me to
confront some issues I probably needed to think about (and for the
record, there were no hard feelings on my part and I have nothing but
warmth and regard for the woman involved. Thank you for being there
and teaching me important life lessons). I continue to be blessed
with a feast of friends, which I need to remind myself of when I’m
feeling disconnected.

Okay,
that’s it for now. 2015, like any year, had its highs and lows,
gains and losses. Time passes and only we remark on it.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

This is a short entry, meant as an update to my previous Time is a Ghost Town blog post about my home town.

As of today, Time is a thing of the past. I spoke with Mom this morning. The last house in the village has been torn down. All gone.

In my previous post about this I mentioned that a friend of mine, Tara Kinsell, was writing an article about Time, which is what prompted me to write. She finished it. You can read it online HERE. The article is on page 8 and features my Mom and Dad pretty heavily. There's another article about me and my art and writing on page 7. There's another article about the church I grew up in on page 20 (a picture of which can be seen on the cover of my novel, Scratch), and another about the last house to be torn down on page 28.

I can't go home again, at least to the physical reality that was once there. Luckily Home means a lot more to me than just a place.